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Fidelity(continued) "God, I can't bear this heat," moaned Kate. Nick was probably half way up some unclimbable rock face in the Lake
District with — With a scream, Kate recklessly ran and dropped into the pool. I hadn't
even seen her remove her bikini top and shorts, now marooned on her
clipboard. "Come on in; it's sublime. Orgasmic." "How will we get out? Aren't you frightened?" "To hell with the consequences." Her voice remained light.
"But — " "Come on. We'd better be quick." I looked around at the distant pairs of students, scattered over the
peat bog. They were all head down, intent on their field work. Above the water, her shoulders were corn gold. Two weeks of all-day
sunshine had germinated a mass of freckles which now colonized the fields
of her flesh. Below the surface, I saw hints of pale, buoyant breasts.
Testosterone began to overwhelm my adrenalin-fed horror of the pool.
I stripped off and toe-felt my way to the edge of the vegetation before
collapsing carefully into the water. The intense novel pleasure of its warm lubrication dampened my fear
of the soft, organic enclosure. Anxiety mutated into fascination. "I
wonder what's underneath us? Deep down." The last words more a
moan of pleasure than words. In reply she took my hands, and we started circling round and round
in a slow amphibian dance. Arms motionless, only our legs moved. I wondered
what it would be like with Nick here to share this experience. "Do you believe in fidelity?" she asked. "That's what we're here for, isn't it? To prove that plant communities
are best described by the plants that are found there, and nowhere else?"
Why am I having to tell her this? Our toes accidentally bumped. "Plants
that are faithful to a particular habitat." "I think this bog is best described by all the Sphagnum.
Not some insignificant plant that happens to be faithful," she
said. Our legs brushed together. She stared at me and smiled. Her eyes penetrated
mine, unembarrassed. I looked down into the dark water, trying to guess
the true color of her areolae. "I bet no one has ever done this before," she said, still
staring. Her floating red-gold curls formed a halation around her face
that was now outshone by a wide, enigmatic smile. Her legs locked around
my waist. I was captive. Then I was taken in. At first it was awkward. Breathing without swallowing the acid water
was difficult. But I was an avid pupil. My fear had gone, as clearly
as if it had never existed. The surprise was — Kate was as easy
as Nick. Myself, I was committed: there was only one way to go. As if
I was standing at the North Pole. There was no longer a north, or east,
or west. They had simply dissolved away. If I had to make a move, my
only choice was to go south. We learned fast. We didn't look away from one another as we slowly
made love. I was enchanted, possessed. I saw Kate still examining me.
First my sense receptors for taste and smell shut down, then hearing
and sight, as the touch signals from the one isolated area overloaded
the nerve pathway to the brain. Then that fuse blew. Blackout. Opening my eyes and once again aware of the four dimensions of reality,
I saw she was still inspecting my face. I went to kiss her wide mouth
to recapture that citrus memory, but she turned her head away, and my
lips landed on her ear. I caught a faint whiff of hydrogen sulphide.
Perhaps a product of decay from the unmeasured depths of the lake below.
I climbed out of the pool easily, then helped Kate. As we rubbed the
water off ourselves and quickly dried in the sun, she pointed out that
the others were jogging back to the van. "How come they've all
finished surveying their areas at the same time?" she said. Then
I saw the reason. Behind us, a cinematic back projection of an incredibly
high mountain range had been switched on. One third of the sky to the
south was obliterated by a solid, plum-purple wall of thunder clouds.
We were a long way from the shelter of the vehicle. "We had better
be quick," I said as I pulled on my shorts and tee-shirt. "We? There is no — " The weather hit us abruptly. We were blasted and beaten down by a torrent of hail stones the size
of golf balls. Kate cried with pain. Holding her clipboard over her
head gave little protection. I started to remove my tee-shirt to cover
her but had to stop: the stones burned my shoulders with a vividly exquisite
pain. Hell had deceived us by attacking from above, not below. I did
my best to cover her assaulted skin with my body. I, too, was now yelling
with pain. We started running, but our four-legged chimera was too freakish
to remain upright as the floating mass of peat bounced up and down.
We separated. The landscape rapidly whitened, as if painted by a pointillist with
a limited palette. Slush formed miniature ice floes in the hollows between
the Sphagnum hummocks. The others looked at us in curious amazement as we reached solid ground,
far from the pool. Then I saw we were both covered with wet, brown peat,
transformed into prehistoric bog dwellers. Sheltering in the vehicle, my chaotic thoughts about my unexpected
future with Kate were razored away to simple clarity. Maintaining a
secret affair with Kate and Nick at the same time would be complicated,
hazardous, even, but the rewards... I didn't get a chance to tell the others that Kate didn't believe in
fidelity. They were too busy discussing who would scuba-dive tomorrow
to examine the underside of the bog and the lake beneath. The leader
was excited, because it had never been done before. Would it be some
primeval soup? What would be found there? What would it feel like? A
mystery, like the far side of the moon. The storm passed over as quickly as it had arrived. The sun melted
away the painted white canvas of the bog and illuminated my mind. It
was as if I'd been given a unique thought, a sudden insight. However
unexpected —out of a clear blue sky — my affair with Kate
was meant to be. However many noughts in the zero point zero zero zero
percentage probability of it ever happening — given enough time,
it had to happen. I could picture the people and the room of
that particular statistics lecture. Kate's voice intruded. Too loud, and trembling. "If it's a mystery,
then it should stay that way." As we walked back across the bog to finish our work, I asked Kate:
"Why this sudden rejection of scientific enquiry?" It seemed
so unnecessarily pessimistic. Antithetical to my newfound knowledge
that, once I had taken a step away from the pole, then I could move
in any direction. North, east and west had crystallized out of solution.
Her voice rose again. "It would be a waste of time. There's nothing
there. Nothing of importance." I thought it best to let that go and seek agreement. "I don't
want to hurt Nick. We must be very discreet in our affair: when we meet,
where — " "I'm going to tell him what happened here," she said. "God, yes. What a storm. It must be something to do with the Alps
to the south and temperature inversions. "No... about us. What we did." "For God's sake, why do — ?" "Nick and I tell one another everything." "Why — ?" "Because it's secrets that make people sick and keep them sick.
You of all people, Chris, should know that." Her nose had caught the sun and was starting to peel. |
